Choosing a travel destination and then planning a travel route is often an important first step for a tourist when planning and preparing for a trip. Prior to leaving for a trip, a tourist may have several travel-related questions, such as questions relating to travel destinations, which attractions to visit, the most popular travel paths within an attraction, and a recommended itinerary for visiting one or more attractions, among many others. Historically, a tourist could answer some of these questions by word of mouth, by visiting a travel agent, and/or by reading travel guides associated with the region the tourist is traveling. However, such techniques are time-consuming and the resources may not provide sufficient information for the tourist to plan a trip based on his or her travel preferences.
With the emergence of the Internet, individuals now have access to a wealth of travel information, such as online travel guides, web-based communities, and travelogues and uploaded photographs describing and illustrating travels experienced by other tourists. Although a tourist may search for travel information using the above resources and/or ask questions in web-based communities, these efforts generally prove to be inefficient and the information provided will likely not be customized to that particular tourist. Reading travelogues one at a time may provide valuable travel information, but since each travelogue records only individual footprints of a particular trip, it can be time-consuming to manually summarize multiple travelogues and identify a travel route that satisfies user preferences. For instance, the tourist who authored the travelogue may have completely different travel preferences than the reader. Moreover, as the information provided in travelogues can be unstructured and may vary from person to person and from language to language, the travelogues may be extremely difficult for a tourist to follow.